The Only Way is "Arc"?

A comparative study of Western Fiction Vs. Anime character arcs

So, this is a little something new that I’ll be doing periodically called The Codex where I’ll be sharing my musings on the writing process, influences, etc etc!

You see it all the time mentioned in how-to books, YouTube videos and Masterclasses - The protagonist must have a character arc!

And, y’know what? Usually this holds true.

As the audience reading a book, watching a TV show or viewing a movie, we leave with a bad taste in our mouths when this doesn’t happen. Sometimes, it’s a poorly constructed plot that just doesn’t make sense. Other times it’s that the main character has an underdeveloped or non-existent character arc.

They started the story one way and ended it with little-to-no growth or growth that doesn’t follow logically from the storyline.

A character arc can be defined as:

…the transformation or inner journey[1] of a character over the course of a story…A driving element of the plots of many stories is that the main character seems initially unable to overcome opposing forces, possibly because they lack skills or knowledge or resources or friends. To overcome such obstacles, the main character must change, possibly by learning new skills, to arrive at a higher sense of self-awareness or capability. - Wikipedia

Now, I’ll be honest; as I write this, I can’t think of a bad example…

Maybe it’s because I don’t tend to buy or rewatch bad movies or because I usually attempt to purge them from all human recollection.

That being said, the last movie I came away from thinking ‘That was really awful’ was Mortal Kombat (2021). So let’s start with that.

If you haven’t watched it yet...don’t worry about spoilers. I’m doing you a favour, trust me.

When we’re first introduced to the main character, Cole Young, he’s preparing for an MMA fight with his wife and daughter. The organiser calls him a ‘human punching bag.’ He’s a last minute replacement and the best the organiser could muster at such short notice. We’re meant to get the impression that this guy’s not very good at this.

Fair enough, so far so good.

True to form, in the next scene, though he starts off with promise, he gets his backside handed to him. Despite pleas from his daughter not to tap out, he does. Clearly, this is something he does often.

So, here we go! The setup! Cole Young is a fighter with a lot of potential who starts off strong but taps out too early. Cool!

Coming away from this, my expectation was that he would learn not to tap out, see a fight through to the end and realise his full potential.

But that…isn’t exactly what happens.

You see, Cole Young is descended from Hanzo Hasashi, a ninja warrior who was killed (along with his family) in the opening of the movie by members of the rival Lin Kuei clan in 1617. As a result of this lineage, Cole was born with a mysterious dragon mark that identifies him as one of the ‘defenders of the earth’ against the parallel realm of Outworld.

Side Note: if the theme song wasn’t in your head, click here…I bet it is now!

Outworld wants to invade, but in order to do so they must win ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments, of which they’ve won nine.

Cole and his family are hunted down by the same ninja who killed Hanzo Hasashi (and somehow lived for 404 years to talk about it) when they’re saved by a guy called Jax who also has the same dragon marking. He tells Cole to track down his partner, Sonya Blade who tells Cole about Mortal Kombat and that he must go to the temple of Raiden to train. At the temple, he learns that everyone with the dragon marking has a secret innate power called an ‘arcana’ that they must unlock in order to gain special abilities.

During training, he’s getting his butt kicked again so as to unleash his arcana by focusing on the ‘pain.’ He taps out when it gets too much for him.

Realising the training isn’t working, he leaves the temple to be with his family.

Outworld sends the four-armed giant Goro to kill Cole. Again, he’s getting his butt kicked and maybe…maybe this is the moment when he learns not to tap out. But no. He’s beat to the point where he can barely move, and seeing his family about to be attacked, his arcana comes forth. He develops superpowered body armour and easily dispatches Goro.

See the problem? All that setup and no payoff!

He didn’t go from tapping out too early to enduring, even against overwhelming odds. He went from tapping out, to tapping out some more, to ‘oh look! Superpowers!’

What the story winds up telling us is that Cole’s problem wasn’t that he kept tapping out too early, but that he just didn’t have superpowers. Not a lack of confidence or endurance or laziness or whatever else they hinted at. He just couldn’t sprout magic armour and conjure daggers from his body (yes, really).

So, what makes a great character arc? I think of Michael Corleone from The Godfather. In the beginning of the movie, Michael (a Marine who fought in WWII) wants nothing whatsoever to do with the criminal empire built by his father, Don Vito Corleone. An attempt on his father’s life is what eventually drives him down a path that leads to becoming the Don himself. It’s a spectacular character arc. In the closing moments when Don Michael Corleone is welcoming people into his office and having them kiss his hand in respect like his father used to, you can hardly believe this is the same guy. But, at the same time, you totally believe it because the arc was well crafted and earned.

Or we can think of Thor from Marvel Studio’s Thor. He starts of as a brash, arrogant, war hungry man child who starts an intergalactic war over an ego trip, but learns humility through mortality and literally sacrificing his life to save lesser mortals.

Or we have Marty McFly from the perfectly scripted Back to the Future who starts off as the black sheep of the family (misunderstood by his parents and misunderstanding them in turn) who learns to not only appreciate them but realises that his parents weren’t all that different from him as a teenager.

They start off one way, they end off another and learn something along the way.

Cole essentially doesn’t change. He just puts on literal plot armour.

Now, he technically does go through a character arc in that he changes by gaining a new skill, but it’s so clunky in the execution that it falls flat. It simply isn’t believable.

Now, all that being said, is it always necessary for a protagonist to go through a discernable character arc in order to tell a good story?

I’m going to say the answer is no, not always.

In fact, in several of my favourite animes, the main character barely changes at all. Rather, what tends to make the story engaging is the effect the main character has on other characters.

It’s the main character’s immutability, their resistance to change no matter what is thrown at them, that drives the story forward as well as the arcs of other characters, causing them to change.

There will be some exceptions here, but for the most part, they all seem to follow this same pattern.

So, without further ado, we’re going to look at three characters from three anime / mangas:

Son Goku from Dragonball

Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto

and Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist.

Son Goku

We first meet Son Goku, the protagonist of Dragonball, as a mysterious orphaned child with a monkey tail. He’s lived something of a sheltered life in the middle of nowhere and thus is presented as a bit of a naive country bumpkin with unnatural brute strength.

There are two things that Goku loves more than anything: food and fighting.

As the series progresses, Goku wants nothing more than to fight stronger and stronger opponents, growing more powerful in the process.

We later learn that this is because he’s a Saiyan; an alien warrior race with a proclivity for fighting.

One of the things I love about Dragonball is watching Goku grow from being a child, to a teen, to an adult, to a grandfather. In all that time, his character doesn’t really change beyond growing more powerful. He remains the naive country bumpkin who loves to eat and loves to fight.

But it’s his tenacity, his desire to keep fighting and the fact that he doesn’t actually have a bad bone in his body that causes him to have a profound effect on everyone he meets.

Almost every friend he makes along the way, throughout all 519 chapters of the manga, starts as an enemy.

Whilst some wind up working with him towards some common goal, many are won over by his peculiar obsession with fighting and his simple-hearted good nature. His decision to spare the lives of his enemies, though making little sense to his comrades at the time, becomes instrumental as the story progresses.

It’s not the fact that he changes, it’s the fact that he changes others.

Naruto Uzumaki

Naruto Uzumaki is very similar to Goku in this regard. In fact, I’ve come to call him ‘Naruto the Evangelist’ in that it’s his philosophy and subsequent monologues that end up turning his enemies into allies. He doesn’t beat his enemies into submission or kill them, rather he reforms them.

Out of the three characters, however, Naruto goes through the most typical character arc. He starts off as a bumbling prankster with little skill, plenty of promise and a big dream: to one day become Hokage, the leader of his village. By the end of the story, he matures to such a degree that he’s almost unrecognisable, but his nature as a prankster with a big dream doesn’t change. In fact, his bumbling nature becomes key to outsmarting his opponents.

Like Goku, he’s an orphan, however, he’s shunned by his fellow villagers for being the host of the Nine-Tails; a powerful demon fox that once attacked the village before being sealed in his body as a baby.

Above all else, Naruto wants to be treated with the dignity and respect of a normal human being. He desires the love he never received as a child.

You would think that, with such trauma, his heart would become hardened or crushed beyond repair but it’s quite the opposite. He’s full of hope, overconfidence and optimism, almost to the point of hard-headed foolishness. But again, it’s this fool-hardy hope that causes him to win over those around him and overcome his enemies.

This is particularly seen in his encounters with three of the antagonists in the series: Pain, Obito and Sasuke.

Sasuke starts off as a rival student he’s deeply jealous of. The truth is, he understands Sasuke in a way no one else does. Both of them are victims of pain and trauma. Naruto comes to see Sasuke not only his first friend, but a brother. It’s this burning desire to bring his friend back from darkness that drives the narrative forward for the rest of the series. Whilst Sasuke tries to rid himself of his friendships to devote himself fully to the path of vengeance, it’s Naruto’s refusal to give up on him that causes him to eventually turn back.

Similarly, Pain tries to convince Naruto of his view; that true world peace can only come through force and destruction. That’s just the way of the world. Again, it’s Naruto’s refusal to accept this (even if he can’t think of a counter argument) and his refusal to kill that causes Pain to reform. Naruto’s act of forgiveness after Pain murders his mentor becomes the catalyst for change.

And finally, we have Obito. Obito becomes obsessed with Naruto due to his dream of becoming Hokage and his dedication to his friends. He sees in Naruto a shadow of his younger self and wants to prove to Naruto that his beliefs are naive; that the world is truly beyond saving. It’s Naruto’s steadfast refusal to shift from his belief that convinces Obito that he’s in the wrong.

Once again, it’s the steadfast consistency of the protagonist who changes the people around him.

Edward Elric

Edward Elric is the youngest State Alchemist in the fictional country of Amestris. He lost his left leg (and later his right arm) in a failed attempt to perform what is considered taboo amongst alchemists with his younger brother, Alphonse; the resurrection of their dead mother. His limbs are replaced by mechanical prosthetics (from which he gets the moniker, the Fullmetal Alchemist), whilst his brother’s soul is bound to a suit of armour after losing his entire body (causing everyone to mistake him for the Fullmetal Alchemist).

Their sole mission throughout the story is to reclaim their lost bodies.

Like the other characters we’ve looked at, Edward’s basic personality doesn’t change throughout the series. He’s an intelligent, short-tempered, highly skilled alchemist with a complex about his height and a strong belief that no one is truly a monster.

It’s this steadfast belief that causes him to win over several of his enemies. It’s this conviction—that he’s not a monster, but perhaps a victim of his own poor choices—that causes Edward to see the potential in all those whom others have given up on.

What all of these protagonists have in common is that it’s not that their character goes through massive change; but rather, they’re put into varying situations and the drama and excitement comes from seeing how they deal with each new situation. Will this finally be the one that overwhelms or changes them?

This concept is used to ironic, comedic effect in One Punch Man. The main character, Saitama, suffers from depression because he’s become so strong that he can beat any foe with a single punch. Every time he faces a new opponent, the question becomes, ‘Will this finally be the one that takes more than one punch to beat?” And each time, the answer is, no.

Keon Wesley

So, now we come to Keon Wesley, the main protagonist of my young-adult fantasy novel, Underland and the Forehidden Kingdom.

In conceiving the character, I wanted to follow a traditional character arc as found in Western fiction, but I also wanted to sprinkle some of these aforementioned anime influences in too.

Essentially, I wanted to combine the notion of a character changing through their character arc and changing those around them through aspects of their own stead-fast personality.

Thus, the aim is for each member of the Millionth and Fifth Battalion to have their own character arc, and that in helping them complete their arcs, Keon gains a piece of the puzzle that completes his own.

This emphasises the central purpose of The Feast, wherein Keon learns the heart of becoming a Torchbearer; everyone brings something to the table, and from what each person contributes, everyone grows.

If you want to see how that unfolds, you’ll just have to read the serial ;)

What do you think? Does a character always need a straight forward character arc? Can you think of any other examples? Let me know in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this article, do hit subscribe and consider checking out Underland and the Forehidden Kingdom.